Satellite News

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft shut down its ion propulsion system on 20 November as scheduled. The spacecraft is now gliding toward a Mars flyby in February 2009.

Nigerian newspapers are still discussing the failure of the country’s first communications satellite, NigComSat 1. As it has now been confirmed that the total loss of the spacecraft is a reality, the media’s attention turns to the future – and to the past.

Russia will put into orbit three GLONASS navigation satellites on 25 December (local time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Roskosmos said.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has signed the Small GEO Platform and Small GEO Mission contracts with the respective industrial primes, OHB-System AG (Germany) and Hispasat S.A. (Spain).

Thales Alenia Space announced the signature of a contract, with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Ltd, for the development, the delivery and the installation of elements in the Amos 4 Ground Segment.

Nilesat, has selected GMV’s real-time satellite monitoring and control product, hifly, to control the new Nilesat 201 satellite and GMV’s flight dynamics product, focusGEO, to perform the flight dynamics operations.

Mobile Satellite Ventures LP (MSV) announced that the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted communications licenses for the two new MSV gateways in the U.S. being built to support the company’s next-generation integrated satellite-terrestrial communication network for North America.

The International Space Station began operations ten years ago, on 20 November 1998, when the Russia-built Functional Cargo Block (named Zarya, Russian for “Dawn”) – the first ISS building component – was launched from Baikonur aboard a Proton rocket.